ANNALS OF COMMUNICATIONS stations and on MSNBC-TV. The of- fice is within a labyrinth of corridors- past an immense tan cowboy hat hang- ing on a coat hook, past a limited-edition Elvis jukebox alive with lights, past a couch and a chair draped with Indian blankets. In a corner of this dimly lighted warren, Imus is surrounded by shelves sagging with books and by tables . piled with bound galleys of about-to-be- published works. A muddy-blue indus- trial carpet covers the floor; the walls, which are panelled, are of a dark wood that is more gray than brown, like the small desk that Imus dwarfs. The pro- gram generates nearly half of the fifty million dollars a year in revenue which WFAN contributes to its corporate par- ent, CBS Radio. Imus, who is more subdued off the air, met me in his office. Although he is quick to dismiss people as suckups, he exempts his Ranchhands. "I'd be sur- prised if they did it for cynical reasons," he said when I brought up the five- . thousand-dollar gifts and asked about possible motives. "Maybe I'm naïve. I don't think so." Of his alleged power, I " I ' bull h . " mus says, t s SIt. He told me he had no list of media Ranchhands, so I produced one that I'd been compiling, and Imus confirmed that it was accurate. The list: "Face the Nation" anchor Bob Schieffer; "60 Min- utes" correspondent Lesley Stahl; ABC News anchor Barbara Walters; CNN's Larry King; CNN anchor Judy Wood- ruff; CNN News chairman Tom John- son; NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell; NBC president Robert Wright; Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle; author Anna QJ.1indlen; author Mary Higgins Clark; author Carol Higgins Clark; Imus's literary agent, Esther (Lobster) Newberg; Simon & Schuster; WFAN sportscaster Mike Francesa; Daily News sports columnist Mike Lupica; ' ccess Holly- wood" anchor Pat O'Brien; Republican Mary Matalin and Democrat James Carville; Laura Ingraham (she gave a thousand dollars and had a heifer named in her honor); Brokaw (in lieu of a cash contribution, he donated a horse . from his Montana ranch); Greenfield; Rather; and Stephanopoulos. I asked if it was bull for Imus to say, as he has said, that people come on his show because they fear him. "Yes," he replied. Then he smiled slightly and added, "But some people don't like to be made fun of:" He added a moment later, "It has some value to them. That's why h " t ey come on. The next morning, on the air, I had become part of my own story. Imus talked about our interview. He called me "charming," but then he proceeded to call me "hideously misguided" and "cyn- ical." He joked about recruiting Bo Died, a former detective and show regu- lar, to bend my knees. Then he told Andrea Mitchell, "He doesn't un- derstand that the only reason peo- ple appear on my program is be- cause they just don't want me to make fun of them. It has nothing to do with power. It's fear!" It wasn't fear that lured Cokie Roberts back. Six months ago, Imus told me, he decided to lift the ban on Roberts and invite her to return. " Sh ' " h I . d " Sh e s a great guest, e exp aine. e said fine. She said she'd come in when she's in New York." At the beginning of his April 29th show, Imus announced that the next day "Cokie Roberts returns to the show." "Unbelievable!" snickered his sidekick McCord, who was sitting direcdy across from the I-Man, as he calls him. "She's 'banned for life'! Did she call?" "Of course she called," Imus said. He went on to explain, "We always liked Cokie Roberts. She was a good guest.... She said the reason she was calling was that George Stephanopoulos was very . " apprOVlI?-g. "You're gullible," the producer Mc- Guirk declared. Roberts, who has a new book to sell, appeared on April 30th. For an exceed- ingly cordial seventeen minutes and twenty seconds, she and Imus talked about, among other things, her book, "We Are Our Mothers' Daughters." Not long after Roberts appeared, I told Imus that Simon & Schuster's Jack Romanos had praised him as "the second most powerful person in the country in terms of selling books." Imus professed outrage at this lack of respect, and during his May 6th show he de- clared, "Oprah Winfrey couldn't have put 'Spin Cycle' "-about the relationship between Clinton and the press-"on the best-seller list if she'd have bought all the copies herself If you said, 'Have 61 you read "Spin Cycle"?' she would have thought it was a washing-machine man- ual!" The more Imus talked, the more agitated he became. Looking at his side- kicks, he announced that they would murder both Romanos and Simon & Schuster: "So here's the new poligr. We are never, ever, in the history of this program-ever!-going to have an au- thor on this show who has a book at Simon & Schuster. . . . Why would you want to go on the No.2 show?" Another lifetime ban? When I later asked Imus how long the ban would last, he said, "It lasts until the photography book my brother and I are doing for them I" comes out. To listeners who enjoy the act, Imus appears to be a man who says whatever he pleases. He won't build a church on the Ranch, and to hell with listeners who ask him to. He makes fun of Jews, blacks, Italians, feminists, Cardinal O'Connor. On April 27th, he shook a bottle of pills, and announced that he would conduct an on-air experiment with the impo- tence drug Viagra; he handed one tablet each to various male employees (ex- empting himself), and kept asking how things were going. "I'm pretty much a no-bullshit deal," Imus told me. Mike Wallace compares Imus to Howard Stem, seeing both men as shock jocks and sometimes sophomoric joke- sters. But Wallace also notes an enor- mous difference. "Stern is a crass vulgar- ian," he says. "Imus in his soul is a much gender person." Imus reaches only about half as many listeners as Stem, but he is proud that his audience, unlike Stern's, is largely white collar. "We have a more upscale audience than NPR," he said. During the April 23rd show, Imus blurted out that he had received an invi- tation to critique the Times at a luncheon with the editorial-page editor, Howell Raines, and other executives from the newspaper. The invitation came from Sam Tanenhaus, a staff editor on the Op- Ed page, whose recent biography of Whittaker Chambers Imus has plugged. Imus, Tanenhaus wrote in the invìtation, "might give us an idea or two for our sec- tions and also give us a read on how the pages are doing." The Don won't go, but he was pleased by this show of respect. .